Staff Member

I’ve contacted phrunt to ask him about his special approach. He said he did nothing special, he probably used Zhaoliang’s automatic mod tool.
So I thought about, and I know the answer now!!!

The latest version of Zhaoliang’s tool (first of October) creates a SSV3 mod as usual. This is the same mod as my first mod, but you think it won't work!

The older tool (July I think) does the follow.

It scans the 1b module for the RSDT string. The FIRST position found at phrunts bios is at 1BDD0 at 1b module.
This IS NOT the ordinary start of the RSDT table.
So the tool starts to modify there. This is really a place at no one knows what happens. The tool raises the byte 75 to 79 and so on. Remember: THIS IS NOT the start of the RSDT table!!!

After the tool has done that job it overleaps the real RSDT, so the result is a untouched one. After that the tool modifies the XSDT as usual.
This is exactly the way I described above. I called it new approach…. LoooLL

I thought this is a new approach, but is in fact a bug of the old tool. It is not selective enough to find the RSDT TABLE!!!

Really strange is that THIS mod is confirmed to work. And you say the usual mod didn’t allow to boot your PC!!

You see what I mean? This is unbelievable!! The way with the old tool should work by accident?

IMO my first “normal” mod will work, the second one NOT, so Roman reported a false positive!

Staff Member

Modify 1b module and replace it using amimmwin. Check its new compressed size.
Here the size was bigger (195412).
I edited some (UNIMPORTANT) text strings (Meagatrends Inc.) to "20h" = space!

The more equal bytes you have got the less is the resulting compressed space.

Replace it again and check the size. Try it as long as it has got a different size.
After I've got the same size again, I used a "fresh" original bios again and replaced 1b module. This I did for safety in case of something (structure of bios) went wrong before.

If you've got a smaller size you have to add random strings to increase the resulting compressed size.
Do NOT edit important code!

P.S.: I've inserted the SLIC at offset 36000h at biosfile!! Don't forget to add the checksum byte 177h (last additional byte of SLIC) to keep the integrity of the biosfile.

Staff Member

I'm very sorry to hear that. At the same place, Zhaoliang edited the strings as well, but he had to add some characters. I edited some strings at other bios as well, with no negative effect. I didn't know that.
How did you flash the mod, with Afudos?
No chance to recover it by yourself? What about clear cmos / remove battery? Have you consulted your manual about the recovery procedure?

Edit: I've checked it again. IMO the edited strings are only text strings, a message. The replacement of letters to space "20h" never caused to a bricked board so far. I cannot explain why it resulted to a bricked board. The only difference is that Zhaoliang placed the SLIC into a free "ff" bytes area between 2 modules and I did it at the beginning. But I used the same address.

P.S.: I have contacted Zhaoliang to make a mod. I hope he'll answer me. Again I'm sorry.......let's see what he will do...

Staff Member

If you want to try it till it works without any sorrow, I suggest to you to buy a spare chip. I assume you don't know someone who has got the same board for a hotflash.
With a second chip you are able to hotswap / hotflash a broken bios and to try any mod till you'll succeed.